Visitors to gourmet burger chain Red Robin’s more than 400 locations this summer can experiment with the chain’s new Can-Crafted Cocktails, mixed drinks that use beer as the base, NBC News reports.

The cocktails are stirred up with either Blue Moon or Coors Light, and are served with straws and fruit slices in aluminum cups that look like beer cans. “I wanted our customers to know at first sight that they were looking at a beer cocktail, and the cans help to do just that,” Donna Ruch, master mixologist for Red Robin, told NBC. “People get it right away.”

The Coors Light cocktail also contains ginger liquor and lemonade and is topped with fresh-squeezed lemons while the Blue Moon drink mixes the wheat beer with SVEDKA Clementine Vodka, orange juice and fresh limejuice.Continue reading...

One of the dangers for brands in releasing Super Bowl ads and teasers early is that it allows the criticism to start early as well.

That's what various brands are facing even before kickoff of the Big Game, as Coca-Cola is the latest brand feeling the heat over its pre-Game teaser. Coke is getting criticized for its depiction of Arabs in its desert-set spot, above, while Volkswagen undergoes more examination of the Jamaican accents of the white characters in its "Get Happy" spot.

In other game-related brand developments leading into Sunday's big game, Samsung just released its Super Bowl ad teaser, "El Plato Supreme," featuring Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd pitching their ideas for Samsung's Big Game ad: "The Next Big Thing," a 2-minute spot directed by Jon Favreau, that will air during the 4th quarter of Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday. This is the second year Samsung Mobile has an ad running during the Super Bowl:Continue reading...

Super Bowl XLVII may be unique in that one of the biggest potential branding opportunities has suddenly materialized less than two weeks before the Big Game. And the opportunity is called the Brothers Harbaugh.

It seems unlikely that even the biggest brands would be able to land a deal with Jim or John Harbaugh, or both, this close to the Super Bowl, given that each is now consumed with how to beat the other's team -- and that, for the winner at least, there should be plenty of endorsement opportunities after the game.

But some marketers may be able to figure out how to tie themselves tangentially at least, maybe even convincingly, to what already has become the most intriguing Super Bowl story line perhaps in decades: the mutual success and striving of two accomplished opposing coaches, less than two years apart in age, who happen to be siblings. They're also young for their profession, telegenic, well-spoken and smart.

So we await news on Brother International or some other less obvious brand figuring out how to tap into all of that. In the meantime, there are plenty of other brands gearing up for a Super Bowl lift ahead of Game Day, including Mercedes-Benz.Continue reading...

Beer me! Or, as they are saying in Ohio, "Yuengling Me!" The Dayton Business Journalreports that Ohioans have been gulping down so much of the Pennsylvania-made beer that D.G. Yuengling & Son is now America's largest brewer. (Suck it, Boston Beer Co.)

But Ohio boozehounds appear to be the outliers. Last year was a sobering year for beer sales, with shipments at their lowest level in the US since 2003. Global beer shipments flattened out by 2.9 million barrels, a drop of 1.4 percent from 2010. So brewers are looking to that same group everyone looks to for a bailout: China. Continue reading...

BPsuspends marketing activity (but keeps up social media response) as Obama moves to name panel to investigate Gulf disaster. Other oil brands are staying resilient.

A coalition of America's largest food companies, including General Mills, ConAgra Foods, Kraft Foods, Kellogg, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Hershey, commit to taking 1.5 trillion calories out of their products by 2015 in an effort to reduce childhood obesity.

As the Ritz-Carltonprepares to take world's tallest hotel crown in Hong Kong, luxury hotels are booming in China.